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 Making Exact Change |
Making Exact Change
Part Two: Case Studies Zuni-Appalachian Exchange and Collaboration
Basic Facts
Snapshot The season theme really started when Roadside came for a visit and Ron Short and I took a ride out in the country to Nutria (Arizona), where I was raised. We were sitting outside my grandma’s old house talking about the seasons. I was telling him about how when we planted corn or other seeds, we gave one for Earth, one for the crow, and so on. …That conversation in Nutria became part of one of the songs he wrote about following the seasons. It’s a song about two worlds, with miles of difference between them, and how the seasons and planting were the same. That song is another story about how Appalachia and Zuni collaborated. —Arden Kucate, 2002[1] One reason this collaboration worked was because of the amount of time over the years we’d spent sharing and learning about each other. … We got to the point that we could laugh with and at each other. … I can’t understand all of Zuni culture, but there are some things that have to do with the heart and with feeling that I do understand. Another reason it worked was that the theme of the play – farming — was something we shared. The four of us … writing the play are about the same age, and we had grown up in a time when farming was still an important part of life-a really important part of our background. —Donna Porterfield, 2002[2]
Description History In 1975, Roadside Theater began telling the indigenous stories rising up from its home town, Whitesburg, Kentucky, and the surrounding Appalachian region. The theater was developed as a part of Appalshop, a multidisciplinary, rural arts and education center that produces and distributes film, video, audio recordings, radio and theater that celebrate the people living in the 13-state Appalachian region. Since its inception, Roadside has toured its creations and co-creations to more than 2,000 communities in 43 states and Europe. In the process, the company has developed a process that connects those stories to audiences that reflect the nation’s economic, racial, ethnic, educational and geographic diversity.[3] In 1984, members of the Roadside Theater Company began a 17-year cultural exchange between the company and traditional Native American artists of Zuni. From 1994 to 1996, the two groups co-created and premiered “Corn Mountain/Pine Mountain: Following the Seasons,” a bilingual play with music and dance that explores the differences and common ground of Zuni and Appalachian culture. In the process, the Zuni theater company Idiwanan An Chawe (Children of the Middle Place), was also born.[4] In 2002, Zuni A:shiwi Publishing released “Journeys Home: Revealing A Zuni-Appalachia Collaboration,” a 112-page book that combines the “Corn Mountain/Pine Mountain” play text with interviews, language essays, drawings and a music and spoken-word CD to probe and document the collaboration between Idiwanan An Chawe and Roadside Theater.[5] In February 2003, the Smithsonian Institution presented Roadside Theater and Idiwanan an Chawe’s latest collaboration, “Zuni Meets Appalachia,” a performance of traditional and original Appalachian and Zuni stories and music, at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City and at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.[6] Mission/Values Roadside Theater describes its purpose as the creation of “a body of drama based on the history and lives of Appalachian people and collaborating with others nationally who are dramatizing their local life.”[7] They state further that “the purpose of theater is to increase our understanding of ourselves and our empathy for others.”[8] Idiwanan An Chawe was established, in part, to increase awareness and extend the use of a newly invented written alphabet for the Zuni language created by the theater’s director, Edward Wemytewa, and others in the community. The company uses the new alphabet along with dance, music and storytelling to protect and preserve the ways of the Zuni people.
Success and Change Goals
Defining Success According to the roadside Web site:
The organization is guided by two documents that further articulate their approach to community-based theater. They are the company’s “General Theory of Cultural Organizing and Methodology of Cultural Organizing.” Key elements include:
Idiwanan An Chawe: Here at Zuni, our language and our connection to the land are important. Idiwanan An Chawe tells stories in the Zuni language because we are concerned about the language. We have to maintain it. Who we are, our religion, our history, our culture, are embodied in our language. If the Zuni language is lost, how will we make prayers; how will we be Zuni? We are finding that theater — telling our stories through live performance — is a good way to keep the language alive.[11] Critical to Success Roadside describes its residencies as “community-strengthening.” Typically they unfold in the four phases they have outlined below:
Other more project-specific characteristics include:
Outcomes One aspect of the Roadside process critical to determining the impact of their work is their “articulate pursuit of three questions.” These are: “What are we trying to change, and why is that important? How are we trying to make this change, and why is that the best strategy? How will we know we are making the change; what data will provide us evidence, so we can improve the work and we can demonstrate its accomplishment to others?”[13] Questions emerging from the Appalachian-Zuni collaboration include: “Have youth participants finished school and continued to develop their cultural identity? Has the project inspired others in the community to start their own projects? Do leaders judge that the project has contributed to a particular campaign – for example, the restoration of the Zuni River?” Specific outcomes from the collaboration have been varied. Over 21 years the Zuni-Appalachian relationship has been established as a part of both cultures. In Appalachia, the iterative Zuni visits helped people there remember and take pride in their own Native American heritage, illustrated by the first Native American exhibition of Indian artifacts, photos and text collected from local families. In Zuni, the publication of “Journeys Home” in the Zuni language represents the most and best written Zuni language extant. For both locations the array of public interaction, including oral history collection, singing revival, story circles and public performances, has involved members of both communities in the development and appreciation of the ongoing work.
Nuts and Bolts Environments Whitesburg, the county seat of Letcher County, Kentucky, is located in southeastern area of the state near the Virginia border. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the town’s population is 98 percent white and has an average age of 43 years. Forty percent of Whitesburg residents age 25 and older have college degrees. In 2002, per capita income in Letcher County was $19,337. This was an increase of 32.3 percent from 1997. The county’s 2002 figure was 63 percent of the national per capita income, which was $30,906. The Appalachian region lies across the spine of the Appalachian Mountains running from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It has an area of 200,000 square miles and includes all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states – Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. In parts of the region, rugged terrain makes access difficult. The economy has historically been based on the extraction of natural resources, including coal and timber, and on manufacturing. More than 40 percent of the population is rural, twice the U.S. average, and poverty rates are high. Zuni Pueblo, one of the oldest continually occupied settlements in North America, is located in west-central New Mexico, on the Arizona border.
Leadership Helping individuals and communities discover and publicly present their stories has been part of Roadside’s efforts for two decades. They have evolved a residency methodology that rests on four broad principles they call their pillars:
Resources Roadside Theater’s current annual budget is $271,000. They describe the organization’s fiscal journey as being “up and down depending on project activity.” As with most of the projects in this study, sources include federal, state, foundation and individual contributions. For the collaboration, at least 50 percent of the support was given to Roadside and Idiwanan An Chawe by their respective communities in the forms of food, housing, volunteer time, cultural mentoring, etc. The funders for the collaboration are:
Governance Roadside Theater is governed by the Appalshop Board of Directors. Idiwanan An Chawe is governed by the Zuni Tribal Council, which is a sovereign entity. Permission for and understanding of the project have been sought and negotiated at every step throughout the history of the collaboration. In both communities, governance contributed by embracing the project and encouraging community participation. Partnerships An array of partnerships has been developed in both communities. These include churches, senior-citizen centers, public schools, A:shiwi Publishing company, civic organizations, local business, etc. Training According to Donna Porterfield:
Constraints The mission was fulfilled. An issue in Zuni and Appalachia has been capacity – not always enough resources of time and people to do as much as everyone would enjoy.[16]
Advice to Funders Donna Porterfield said:
[Next: Part Three: Findings] [Table of Contents] Notes 1. Cocke, Dudley, Donna Porterfield, Edward Wemytewa, "Journeys Home: Revealing a Zuni-Appalachia Collaboration" (Zuni A:shiwi Publishing, 2002) |
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